Background of the Study
Science fiction and fantasy legend Andre Norton (1912–2005) wrote popular stories over a span of seventy years. Her given name actually was Alice, but as teenage boys were her main readers, she adopted the ambiguous name Andre. “I am very used to being ‘Mr. Norton’ and have stunned radio program directors when acting as guest-interviewee by appearing in skirts.”
Called the “Grande Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy,” Andre Norton broke ground for women in the genre; she was the first woman to receive Grand Master awards from both the World Science Fiction Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. Her 1965 novel Year of the Unicorn was the first American fantasy novel with a female chief protagonist.
Generations of readers have grown up voraciously reading Andre Norton’s work. Her novels featured a recurring theme of a journey to find one’s full potential—and that more than anything speaks of her dedication to the new writers in the Writers of the Future Contest. She became a judge in 1988 and served until her death in 2005.
“The privilege and pleasure has been given me to serve as one of the judges for this competition. The many stories of high merit which have been placed in my hands have proven that Mr. Hubbard was emphatically correct in his estimation: that a cadre of leaders-to-be in the field of imaginative writing stands ready, willing and able to deliver its best when given the chance of a lifetime to do so offered by the Contest he established.” —Andre Norton
Literature Review
The guardian of the orphaned Willadene plans to sell her for a bride price. But the girl cannot abide the smell of the would-be-groom and runs to her friend the herbmistress, begging for aid. The herbmistress protects Willadene and makes the orphan her apprentice. As the herbmistress’s apprentice, Willadene steps into an entirely new world, one that involves her with the affairs of court. Willadene can smell evil and magic. Willadene also enjoys some very special powers that involve her with the spy and numerous perilous encounters with evil in the city of Kronengred in a dukedom far, far away.
Overall, there’s a theme in each story – of a young woman who inherits or possesses a rare magical skill related to the senses, who sets out to right an imbalance along strongly expressed lines of good and evil. Norton also brings across inventive world building, but it’s not enough for me – across the board I felt there was something off with each story, be it the pacing or the lack of attention to characterisation. Not to mention the clumsy sentence construction. Whether the latter is a product of its time or simply that these stories were never subjected to the tender mercies of both a structural and copy editor’s talents, I don’t know.
In Mirror of Destiny Twilla inherits a magical mirror from her teacher, but before she can establish herself as more than a trainee wise woman, she is whisked off as a prearranged bride for people in a nearby land. By some luck, she ends up in the duke’s household, destined for his son, but the marriage is not to either of their taste, so she makes her escape that leads her to the forest, and the breaking of an ancient curse that binds the fair folk of this world. The biggest issue I had with this story was that the pacing dragged, and I didn’t once feel as if the characters were ever in any real danger that they had to overcome.
The Scent of Magic sees Willadene escape a life of drudgery as a scullery maid to apprentice her to a herbwoman – as Willa has the ability to sniff out magic, which is apparently a rare talent indeed. We also see the point of view of the baron’s daughter, who upon gaining her majority, starts working on gaining power – so that was at least interesting, seeing a woman working on feminine power in a patriarchal society. There’s a larger plot afoot too, once again tied into an ancient evil, and the story heads off into a completely different direction near the end. Of the three novellas, this was the one that I felt was structurally stronger.
After the manifold frustrations of Mirror of Destiny, this sequel is, as the saying goes, a breath of fresh air. It’s the work of a mature and confident author who has mastered her personal formula and still managed to keep it from getting stale.
The third of the magical senses in this series is the sense of smell, and magic here is contained in a full range of scents both good and bad. Our main protagonist is the traditional Norton orphan, in this case a survivor of plague, Willadene, who has a most remarkable nose—it’s very nearly as keen as a hound’s. Willadene has a hard life at the beginning of the novel, indentured to her horrid relative Jacoba, who runs a dirtbag tavern frequented by thieves and scoundrels.
Willadene’s goal in life is to escape the tavern and apprentice with the Herbmistress Halwice, a mysterious, possibly aristocratic woman who has mastered the magic of scent. Many of Willadene’s early adventures are directed toward this end, particularly after Jacoba tries to sell her off to the worst of the scoundrels.
While Willadene is resisting forced marriage and suffering mental and occasional physical abuse, another young woman in the city is undergoing similar experiences. Mahart is the duke’s daughter, and has been kept like a princess in a tower, isolated from the world. Now, as she nears her eighteenth birthday, her father finally brings her out in public and sets her up for a royal marriage.
The ducal family has a complicated history. The plague killed the heroic former duke and his male heirs. His daughter, being female, cannot inherit. Therefore the title has gone to a distant relative, a cranky little mouse of a man who hates ceremony and has little use for his daughter except as a means to gain political advantage.
The former duke’s daughter, Saylana, is not accepting her lot in any tame or peaceful fashion. She intrigues constantly on behalf of herself and her lout of a son. But the current duke is a canny politician, and the duke’s Chancellor is considerably more than that.
Meanwhile, the duke is dealing with an outlaw band that has been raiding merchant caravans, a king with a fairly useless heir but a plethora of younger sons including the warrior Prince Lorien, and various conspiracies inside the city itself. It’s all terribly convoluted, and that’s even before the revelation that evil has laired inside the ducal palace.
Willadene finally succeeds in freeing herself from Jacoba and her nasty plans, but in true Norton fashion, there’s hardly any time to relax and enjoy Halwice’s teaching before she’s thrust into the conflict between the duke and Saylana. The Chancellor has a master spy called the Bat (whom in my head I see more as the Dread Pirate Roberts), who has been spying out all the different plots in the city and beyond. Willadene first encounters him as a near-corpse in Halwice’s shop (seriously: Westley who is only mostly dead), cast under an evil spell along with Halwice. She has to break the spell and help revive Nicolas, who almost immediately gets himself hurt again, this time physically.
As I said, it’s convoluted. Willadene and Halwice spend a great deal of time ducking Saylana’s spies, discovering and navigating secret passages, patching up Nicolas, and fighting off magical attacks on the duke, the Chancellor, and Mahart. Saylana’s awful son lumbers in and out, snarling and sneering and threatening various forms of violence. Saylana herself is more into slinking, though she has an epic sneer of her own. And she’s a master of the evil arts of seduction.
Amid all this, Willadene discovers that her magical talents are exceptional and that she can smell evil wherever it lurks. She can also, in houndlike fashion, track individual humans by scent. And she can use various scents and fragrances to both attack and protect.
While Willadene is discovering her powers, Mahart is coming into her own awareness of who and what she is. She understands that she has a duty to marry advantageously, and she accepts the ways in which she’s expected to make that happen. She has her own lesser gift of scent magic, and she has dreams of an enchanted garden. She even learns to ride a horse in scenes that are pretty accurate in their portrayal of a complete beginner’s introduction to these large and highly mobile animals.
(Though really, all those saddle horns—historic saddles did not have horns. That’s a development of the American West, for roping cattle. It’s the handle you snub the rope around. Medieval saddles rose high fore and aft, the better to keep the rider in place, but nobody was roping cattle, especially not noble ladies riding in processions or being abducted into the wilds by wicked scoundrels. So. No horns. Nope.)
It all comes to a head when Prince Lorien defeats the bandit leader and the duke arranges a victory celebration in which Mahart will do her best to capture a royal husband. Saylana of course is not about to let this happen. She throws herself at Lorien and arranges to have Mahart kidnapped by magic, right out of her bed.
It’s up to Nicolas the master spy and equally master tracker, and Willadene the human scent hound, to track Mahart down. While they rush off down the trail, Lorien arranges a more suitably military rescue. Mahart herself, who has come through her sheltered childhood with a remarkable degree of courage and autonomy, manages to escape her captors and find refuge in an enchanted garden—the same one she’s been dreaming of all her life.
This garden is a sanctuary in the heart of a ruined city once dominated by a wicked sorceress. Here the plot swerves away from political intrigue and personal struggle with an occasional flare of magic, to straight-up magical conflict. Suddenly everybody is talking about this place called Ishbi, Ishbi this, Ishbi that. My editorial hat kept falling off its hook onto my head and making me want to beg the author to introduce this concept earlier, please.
It is pretty decent fantasy good-versus-evil, and there’s setup for it earlier, with Willadene repeatedly stumbling across zones of reeking evil during her many perambulations of the back ways of the city and the palace. Saylana has bound herself to the ancient and undead sorceress, who is looking to come back into the world. It’s up to Willadene and Mahart and their respective young men to make sure this doesn’t happen.
The magical plot eventually ties back into the political plot, somewhat abruptly as always in Norton novels. The double romances are not as tacked-on as they often are, though the depiction of Mahart and Lorien dancing at the ball isn’t anything like what both of them claim to remember later. Continuity blip there.
Willadene and Nicolas have a genuine if shallow arc, and come to esteem each other as they work together. I do particularly like the way Willadene uses Nicolas’ instruction in trailcraft as she harvests some cress for dinner, and Nicolas says approvingly, “Welcome to the trail.” That’s kind of romantic.
What’s interesting to me is that the characters are not all cardboard cutouts. The villains tend to be, especially the loutish males with their thick lips (bit of ingrained racism there) and Saylana with her dragon-lady looks (there too). But the Chancellor has a degree of moral ambiguity to him, and the duke is rather lovely in his utter mundanity. He even starts to care about his daughter, once he’s taken the time to notice her.